Ansible Variables

• Variables in Ansible can be declared in
  • Playbooks
  • Inventory files
  • Many other locations
• Lets write playbook to install tomcat Refer Here

Scenario: Installing tomcat9 on ubuntu 20.04

• Lets verify if the manual steps are working or not
• Step -1 : install java

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-11-jdk -y

• Refer Here for the playbook and inventory created so far.
  
• Step 2: Create a tomcat user: Refer Here for the manual steps
• We have create a task using user module to create system user. Refer Here for the changes added.
  
• Now lets download the tomcat tar file and extract it and Refer Here for the changes done in the playbook to accomodate tomcat download and extract
  
• Now lets try to write an ansible task to create a symbolic linkm sudo ln -s /opt/tomcat/apache-tomcat-${VERSION} /opt/tomcat/latest
• Refer Here for the changes to create symlink
  
  
• This playbook is creating the latest tomcat folder with root permissions Refer Here
  
• To automate the step sudo sh -c 'chmod +x /opt/tomcat/latest/bin/*.sh' one approach is to use
  • ansible.builtin.command which executes the linux command
• The problem with this approach is, it is not idempotent. So the command will be executed every time ansible playbook is executed.
• To solve this problem,
  • We can use lookups
  • Registering varaibles